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So he's treating people like assets, not friends, and these assets need to be checked on on a regular basis. If there were friends, he'd not need to be reminded

So he's treating people like assets, not friends, and these assets need to be checked on on a regular basis. If there were friends, he'd not need to be reminded of contacting them. He'd miss contacting them. So instead he needs a tool to remind him of that "friend" he needs to contact, because pretending to care is beneficial. One might some day need them. It's incredibly sad that his social life, or rather: the illusion of a social life, is being dictated by a machine.

batushka3 5y ago
For so long we were (and still are) called a human resource, whole departments and studies devoted for human resource management. Treating people like assest fits here.
- MrYellowP 5y ago
  Doesn't make it okay. At all. "Human resources" is dehumanizing. Treating people like assets is dehumanizing. If I told my friends that I had software reminding me of contacting them, they'd consider that we're not actually friends, because friends don't need to be reminded of friends. When there's no bond reminding me, then they're not friends. One cares about friends. When you forget about them, then you're not actually caring.
  - Aeolos 5y ago
    It appears that you feel strongly about this and that is ok. I would only ask you to please be kind to people who do not share your experiences, social skills or background, e.g. introverts, people suffering from social anxiety, people who are on the spectrum or have ADHD... Hundreds of millions of people, who are fully cable of caring, loving and having close friends, yet have trouble maintaining friendships not because they are bad friends, but because their brains and emotions work differently through no choice or fault of their own. If such a tool can help someone maintain a close friendship that would otherwise have fizzled, then that tool has made the world a slightly better place. I don't expect this to change your opinion, but it might be useful to hear a different perspective.
  - kortilla 5y ago
    This lame take is like claiming a birthday gift is meaningless because someone used a calendar reminder. Some people have busy lives but still have many friends (especially ones spread around geographically as you get older). It’s normal adult behavior to forget to contact them for months. > When there's no bond reminding me, then they're not friends. This sounds like some obsessive behavior. I think you may have a much higher bar for friendship than most people do. I have 20-30 people I would consider strong enough friends to have them stay in my house for a weekend on short notice (to give you an idea of trust level here). I contact many of them no more than once every couple of months only when a shared interest reminds me of them. > One cares about friends. When you forget about them, then you're not actually caring. That’s not how that works. At least it doesn’t match the definition of “caring”. It sounds more like “obsessing”.
WastingMyTime89 5y ago
He didn’t talk about friends you are. Still you can safely assume most of the people in the three weeks category are close contacts. Unless you are in college and have little to no obligations, it gets hard to stay in touch with all your friends and keep track of what is happening to them. It’s not treating people like assets. He is putting efforts on his side towards keeping connections and to do that he needs tools to help. What does it change that he uses reminder to think about reaching out? In the end he is still the one doing work towards fostering relationships.
- lelandfe 5y ago
  The author explicitly says the goal of this work is for opportunities
  - gostsamo 5y ago
    From the article: > Most importantly, I always send the kind of messages I’d like to receive. They’re short, genuine, and (ideally) helpful. I never try to sell anything and there’s no agenda other than to keep in touch. You might've read that: > So unless you have a solid system, chances are high that you won’t reach out to people regularly and miss out on a ton of fun and opportunities. but intentionally miss the fun part and treat "opportunities" only in thebusiness context and do not allow for alternative interpretations like intellectual or personal development.
  - WastingMyTime89 5y ago
    The author says it’s the easiest and most effective way to make your life more serendipitous and that if you don’t you will miss on fun and opportunities which is very true. I never go have coffee or enjoy unforeseen activities with people I don’t speak to. Having a large network of lively relationship is indeed a sure way to have more things happening in your life. Also people enjoy other people reaching out to them. Once again there is nothing unusable in what OP is doing. Having tools to help you keep in touch with people is a necessity in any position where you need to maintain good relationships with a large number of people. It takes effort and is a good thing.
  - 5y ago
iovrthoughtthis 5y ago
"if you cared, you'd remember" glad you have this experience, i dont think all of us do. i care deeply but seem to forget people exist and that makes me sad and dislike myself. i wish i could just remember. id still have so many friends if i did.
- dgb23 5y ago
  Similarly I often think of my friends plus wider circle, but I‘m terribly unorganized except I make a conscious effort. That means writing things down, set reminders and so on. Love and organization of social life are orthogonal.
  - pell 5y ago
    >but I‘m terribly unorganized I really should call XY is such a common thought that fades away a second later. Even if it's someone I am really fond of. If they're not in my immediate circle, it's going to be additional work to keep that relationship alive. Putting it on my calendar or as a reminder actually makes me reach out to that person. Win-win. If anything, this shows me _caring_ about someone. Many of these conversations with the people I have in mind often start where we left off too - no matter how many weeks or months in between - which makes me think this all is not about a lack of connection.
    - p_l 5y ago
      This reminds me of anecdotes from... Time Management for System Administrators, by Tom Limoncelli. He talks exactly about "Won't people think I don't care if I have to write it down in a diary?" and mentions how, at least in his experience when reaching for diary for everything, people actually reacted positively - the extra effort of ensuring a note was made, calendar appointment created, schedule arranged made them feel that he was willing to spend some effort on them, instead of just doing the minimum.
    - Talanes 5y ago
      > I really should call XY is such a common thought that fades away a second later. This is exactly right. I am constantly thinking of people that I should get in touch with, but never at a time that would actually be appropriate to do so. It'll be the random work-day thought that disappears by the time I'm done, or it will be sometime unreasonably late.
rossmohax 5y ago
It is not much different than having birthday of your family members in the calendar. It is just a tool to remind you to make contact, what contact will be like is entirely up to you.
lvturner 5y ago
I'm not sure I agree with your take here, it's rather uncharitable. I've lost touch with friends because I failed to do this sort of thing, it's easy to not keep up with people when there is no immediate driver or common interest (perhaps I'm atypical or neurodivergent) this is multiplied when you leave a country and no longer see some people on a regular basis. A system like this would ensure my forgetful nature doesn't kick in and give me that reason I need just to check in on someone I actually care about but haven't had the opportunity to speak to in a while.
- MrYellowP 5y ago
  How do you manage to lose touch with friends? Did you not miss them? If you did, why didn't you contact them? If you didn't, why do you care? One can not forget about friends, one can only stop caring.
  - d1sxeyes 5y ago
    Question 1 I think is packaged in your follow-up questions: - Did you not miss them? 'Missing' someone is an interesting way of thinking about it. When should you 'start' missing someone? I find that often I miss people intensely soon after we meet. This can be difficult, because it may not be possible or practical to meet or communicate with someone immediately, but then that 'missing' starts to wane. By the time it starts to become stronger again, a significant period of time might have passed. - If you did, why didn't you contact them? Missing someone is fairly subjective as mentioned above, but for me, contact alone is not enough to stop me missing someone. Meeting in person is. If I contact someone, it does not stop me missing them we are unable to meet in person, and in fact in some cases, makes me miss them more. Many of my friends don't live in the same city (or even the same country) as me. - If you didn't, why do you care? Because friendships take work, like any other type of human relationship. Someone who currently is an 'acquaintance', who I wouldn't really be too upset about not seeing frequently could develop into a friend. > 'One can not forget about friends, one can only stop caring.' - I think here you're using a very literal definition of forgetting. I think most people don't actually forget about friends, they just use the word forget as a shorthand for 'not actively thinking about all the time'.
personjerry 5y ago
I think describing other people as "friends" or "assets" are just labels you've made up. I think it's unnecessary to be condescending by saying someone else's interpretation is "incredibly sad".
zephyr9 5y ago
Yep. The author is a legit sociopath. This should in no way be considered acceptable human behaviour.
- smilespray 5y ago
  While I don't attempt to solve life problems by creating a database and writing a bunch of code, I think you're going a bit overboard.
- AussieWog93 5y ago
  A sociopath is someone who recklessly and remorselessly harms others to get what they want. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisocial_personality_disorder#Signs_and_symptoms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisocial_personality_disorde... This guy is probably at most ADHD or Aspergers, and simply forgets to contact people he doesn't physically come across on a regular basis.
- psd1 5y ago
  Wow. Awareness of the lived experience of others: nil points. If I'm more charitable than you have been, I'll grant that you simply haven't carried the burden that I have, and that is unfair for me to expect everyone to have moderate levels of empathy, or to actively try to understand their fellow humans. A fair proportion of the people who pushed OP to the top of HN are probably just looking to live a life in accordance with healthy social values. Try not to be a cunt, would you?
erpellan 5y ago
For some people memory is event-driven not interrupt-driven. They can remember all the steps in a complex task, or when with friends, all their shared history but forget to take out the trash, or birthdays, or to call their friends.
- MattGaiser 5y ago
  This reminds me. I am about to go to bed and have not brushed my teeth.
MattGaiser 5y ago
> If there were friends, he'd not need to be reminded of contacting them. No, things just slip your mind, especially if there are a lot of other things going on in life. People forget to take medications that when not taken lead to psychotic breaks. It isn't because they don't care about being sane. People forget their kids in cars. They didn't casually want them dead of overheating. I have friends that when time allows, we speak to each other for hours every day. When time allows. Plenty of times one or the other has forgotten that the other existed for a few weeks. Things get forgotten.
- gjulianm 5y ago
  I don't think the comparison is apt. I think this is something that's being glossed over completely: friendships are two-way, and also flexible. It's not a medication that needs to be taken on a schedule, and it's not a kid that completely depends on you to do things. I don't think a relationship that's only alive because of scheduled contacts can be called a friendship.
pell 5y ago
I didn’t read this as asset management at all, nor as someone managing their actual friends in a list. It seems more like these are various people who they’ve crossed paths with at some point but who aren’t overly close anymore. It’s a system set in place to actively keep in touch with people. I understand that there is a component to this that feels very artificial and maybe therefore quite cold. But consider the other side too: someone is not the best at keeping a contact alive but still values the relationship very much so they put in the effort to create an external structure to help them out. Isn’t that a pretty warm thought after all?
rendall 5y ago
With respect, I feel like this reaction is a bit luddite. OP is using technology to help maintain and build relationships. It's not technology that's dictating anything, it's technology as it should be used: to make our lives better. I'd be absolutely fine with someone I appreciated reaching out to me and asking how things are going, even knowing they are using a prompt, as long as the contact was sincere. I'm wondering what the difference here is compared to these: a close family member / friend who is really good at keeping in touch with people, and prompts you as well; a birthday calendar; a rolodex [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolodex]; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolodex]; Facebook / Instagram as a primary way of keeping in touch with people For me, the difference is only in the specific technology being used, but the intent and effect is indistinguishable.
theblazehen 5y ago
That's not always so easy. For many people, such as people with ADHD, the concept of "out of sight, out of mind" affects their life to a significant level, to the point where they really enjoy contact with their friends, however reaching out to them never comes to mine. Some people legitimately can't remember to contact friends without any external prompting.
playpause 5y ago
If I write my friend's birthdays on a calendar, prompting me to contact them on their birthdays, do you think that's treating them as assets not friends? If not, what is the relevant difference?
wegi 5y ago
Hard disagree here. My days are long and full. And as a somewhat introverted person it takes additional energy to remember to keep in touch with people. Even those that I like very, very much. So it helps to have a reminder and something that actively pushes one to do so. Not every person in the world is wired the way you are. Jakobs approach is basically a more automated calendar. Plus, he is actively making an effort to keep in touch with people he deems important enough to be in his life. Its not as if he is sending automated messages to them.
- vidarh 5y ago
  Similar here. There are a number of people that regularly pop into my head and I'll wonder how they're doing or miss talking to them that I still rarely contact because it takes a lot of energy and I need to be in the right mindset for it even though I enjoy the contact when it happens. If I think about them at a time I don't feel up to being social (often), I end up pushing it aside.
tobyhinloopen 5y ago
What’s the alternative here? Stop contacting his friends unless he misses them? Also, why are you such a judgmental dick about it?
prmoustache 5y ago
Well I am not find of his method, especially about doing a classification of people you would call friends. This is something I would hate to do and would hate feeling others put me in a drawer. On the other hand while local friends can be easy to reach, invite or bump into randomly maintaining long distance friendship is a lot harder to do and require actively looking for that relation to not die. It is ok not to talk to friends every month when they are living far away nor does it diminish your feeling towards them and the pleasure you would have to meet them even if it takes 10y to do so. However if you are not actively maintaining a relation, and that requires some additionnal efforts as it is not natural to reach for people you aren't bumping into every other week/month, you might simply lose trail. It is relatively easy to reach to someone who has social media accounts under his own name and never changed phone number. It requires a lot more of detective work to reach out to people who aren't active on social medias. I have lived in several countries and I had to resort to use linkedin to get back in touch with some of my friends and it can took months for them to reply as most people don't even log on linkedin on a regular basis unless they are actually looking for a job. Some of them I lost complete trail as I couldn't find any social media account either. So automatising your own reminders and force yourself to talk to people you might not reach out on a regular basis, because your local social circle already keeps you busy a lot, is not necessarily a bad thing, even if it feels forced.
xelxebar 5y ago
> If there [sic] were friends... He'd miss contacting them. Interesting! It looks like you are indirectly articulating something about your personal value system and how you express and/or receive caring. Are you familiar with the Five Love Languages [0] idea? The bosic concept (and book) are tailored for couples and couples counseling, but it generalizes in obvious ways to platonic relationships. Essentially, it posits that everyone expresses caring and seeks expressions of caring in specific ways, so called "languages". It's entirely possible---probable in fact!---that the ways in which you personally express caring don't match up with the kinds of expressions that make your friend (or lover) feel most cared for. YMMV, but I've personally found this idea to difuse a lot of "judgemental" feelings towards others, especially in close relationships. [0]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Five_Love_Languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Five_Love_Languages
otikik 5y ago
I see how it might look like that, but you are missing a critical point. Everyone is different. What comes naturally to some doesn't come naturally to others. For a lot of people (me included) keeping in touch with others doesn't come "naturally". We miss contact, and yet we sheldom establish it. There are many reasons for this: poor time management skills, low self-esteem, simple lack of practice, etc. In any case, it takes effort to break out of it. Try to think about something that others do, and that you would like to do, but is difficult for you. Exercise, learn a new language, go to bed earlier, eat more healthily... whatever. This might give you a perspective of what it is like to have this "friction". I see what this person is doing as a way to remove the friction and create a new habit. I have no doubt that when "they gets the thing rolling" with someone it will gradually easy to keep engaged without the machine "dictating" anything.
- l33tbro 5y ago
  Then why do they frame connection in terms of a habit that yields "unlimited upside" and prevents you from missing out on opportunities? You are absolutely right that people are different, but this person comes across a little transactional and an exemplar of the Zuckerborg meme.
  - dskloet 5y ago
    Why is it wrong to see a good friendship as very valuable?
    - l33tbro 5y ago
      Because valuing close friends through the lens of what personal gain they may yield is more than a little sociopathic?
      - dskloet 5y ago
        Why? Happiness and valuable shared experiences are also gains.
yreg 5y ago
I have lost several friends, even good friends by failing to contact each other. If you have many friends who move around the world a lot it's very easy to happen. I miss them very much. I don't miss them as assets as you say. I believe that if I suddenly needed their help and asked for it, they would help me - and it goes the other way as well ofc. I'm not concerned by that. But how do you start talking to someone after years and years of radio silence? Even more importantly, how do you make sure you won't slip out of touch again, other than using a system?
jollybean 5y ago
This comment is far more cynical than his life. My grandmother knew hundreds of people. Her little black book was massive. She had a system as well for reaching out. Your emotions are good for regulating your relationships with 5-10 people, that's about it.
hnlmorg 5y ago
I don't like this method much either but in fairness to the author, as you get older and our social circle inevitably widens with friends from old sports clubs, old neighbors, friends from school, colleague, university, old jobs, friends who are kids friends parents from school, et al, and thus it gets harder and harder to keep track of everyone given much effort it often takes to keep our head above water in our own busy lives. How many people say "we only catch up once every couple of years?" At least this method allows the author to keep those connections open for people he wants to stay in contact with. Even if it might seem a little impersonal from a superficial standpoint.
erwincoumans 5y ago
No he doesn't, you reach the wrong conclusion. It is more similar to a birthday calendar reminder.
Ialdaboth 5y ago
I guess you must be pretty young and havent experimented yet how easy it is to get swallowed by life.
CalRobert 5y ago
There are a lot of people I care about, but sometimes you just _forget_. Or you remember, but it's too late to call them, or they're in a bad time zone, or they mostly use FB and you hate FB. After two kids, rebuilding a derelict house, etc. I found I had to be more intentional about keeping any friendships alive, and this basically seems like a more involved version of keeping friends' birthdays in a calendar to drop them a line.
anoncow 5y ago
Some people can’t express and maintain relationships like other people but still like their friends. Having a system which can make my friends feel that I value them (which I do, but find difficult expressing) helps some people maintain a semblance of a social life.
ivanhoe 5y ago
> So instead he needs a tool to remind him of that "friend" he needs to contact, because pretending to care is beneficial. One might some day need them. Regardless whether Dunbar's number is real or not, one cannot have "hundreds" of actual friends. So we're not really talking about friendships here, but about maintaining a network of contacts - or acquaintances at best - and that type of relationship is usually mutually based on the premise that "One might some day need them", there's nothing wrong about approaching it that way. And even though you're not super close, keeping in touch regularly is very important aspect of keeping your social ring alive. I'm too lazy and disorganized to approach it the way the author describes, but I totally see how it can be a beneficial socializing strategy in long terms.
rcdwealth 5y ago
AussieWog93 5y ago
>So instead he needs a tool to remind him of that "friend" he needs to contact, because pretending to care is beneficial. One might some day need them. You've basically described every single family relationship ever. You don't like catching up with them, and they don't like catching up with you, but you do it anyway because one day you might need a kidney or a ticket out of Warsaw.
scotty79 5y ago
> He'd miss contacting them. I keep fond memories of nearly all people I know. I'd help them on the spot and have a pleasent conversarion if they contacted me. Yet I never miss contacting people I know.
mlatu 5y ago
Look, it's great you can handle your friends with ease. It's really great your life didn't mess you up to a point where contacting people you would normally call friends induces anxiety. Really, congratulations to your great and happy life. Others have to rely on shitty tricks like these. What are YOUR weaknesses then? What can YOU not handle without the help of technology? Please share so somebody can make fun of you too :D OP: thanks for posting.
afandian 5y ago
This comment comes across as arrogant. It's a privilege to have the spare time and energy to act on all of your intentions. You could apply the same argument to keeping to-do lists, storing people's phone numbers in your phone book, using facebook or having a birthday calendar etc. Try having a child and see how close your ability to execute is with your principles!
- reyqn 5y ago
  Who is arrogant there? It's not an issue not to keep in touch every 3 weeks with someone. When you have a child, you just meet new people, parents of your child's friends for example. Relationships don't disappear, they pause, when you get back to them, it's like riding a bike, and if you don't get back to them, it's ok. It's what you do with your life which dictates who you meet, and who you have relationships with. Just live your life, you don't have to try and hack everything... If you really need a system like this, why not, but even I who suck at keeping in touch feel this is overkill and unnatural.
  - terafo 5y ago
    Not everyone is good at socializing. Just live your life is a terrible advice for someone who is struggling with people.
    - reyqn 5y ago
      Yeah, that's what I'm saying. This system is terrible advice for someone who isn't really struggling with people, to such a point that it's detrimental to his wellbeing.
mrtb 5y ago
I think the alternative to having a social life "dictated by a machine" (a machine which, in this case, encodes the intentions of its programmer) is to have a social life dictated by chance and by other's intentions - coincidences on public transport, social media posts ranked by a black box, the noisy patterns of our recollection, etc... what is so 'authentic' about sacrificing one's attention to these forces, which may only align accidentally with our priorities? I've kept a spreadsheet for about 5 years of people I know from my hometown, from uni, past jobs, in other countries, family of friends, etc... ranked roughly by how frequently to contact them, and it has been so helpful and fun for me (and them!) to use it. This might not be helpful for everyone, depending on what you care about and the size of your network, but it seems more "sad" to me that people let chance and social media control their patterns of interaction.
globular-toast 5y ago
> He'd miss contacting them. No, you would miss contacting them. But he is not you. Your comment can be read in two ways. Perhaps you think everyone should be like you and those who are different are "sad". I hope I don't need to explain why this is wrong. Or perhaps you think someone who isn't like you doesn't deserve to have any human contact and should be alone. What a horrible thing to think.
antihero 5y ago
That seems like a very neurotypical view point. Of course people miss people, however, some people (especially people with for instance ADHD) often forget stuff and get distracted, so having an extra layer of organisation can be extremely helpful.
ivanche 5y ago
How did you conclude he’s talking about friends? In the whole article word "friend" doesn’t appear even once. Also, a person can hardly have hundreds of friends. Three, sure. Seven, very probably. Twelve, maybe. But hundreds? Impossible.
hwers 5y ago
He also pretty much screws up the whole system by announcing it like this. There's no way I'd feel anything but manipulation coming my way if I was his friend and a message from this guy popped up in my notifications.
TheAceOfHearts 5y ago
People with ADHD sometimes forget people even exist when they're out of sight. Just because your built-in OS lacks a scheduler and notifications to remind you to keep a connection with friends doesn't mean you don't care about them. Sometimes the person might even receive the notification but fails to act on it because of poor social conditioning.
verisimi 5y ago
He's delegating his humanity and friendships into a spreadsheet! Next stop, do the interactions themselves in the cloud!! Makes sense for networking though. Which I think is what he's actually getting at.
KronisLV 5y ago
> If there were friends, he'd not need to be reminded of contacting them. He'd miss contacting them. As someone who needs a separate text file for remembering important dates (from where i stand, calendars are just weird, the months names arbitrary, the amounts of days in each also an example of some odd legacy system), i disagree. If my brain refuses to work well for dates for a few dozen people, why would someone else remember to contact more people, especially given how busy the lives of many are? Is it a bit nonconventional to develop an automation system for that? Maybe, but then again, people don't even bat an eye when putting down events in their Google Calendar or whatever. "If those events mattered, you wouldn't need to be reminded of them." doesn't sound like a reasonable argument to my brain, even though it might to someone else's. > It's incredibly sad that his social life, or rather: the illusion of a social life, is being dictated by a machine. It's not sad (to me and probably others), please don't downplay someone putting in the effort to address what would otherwise be a shortcoming. Even though a bit odd, if it works for them, props to that person! For further reading, have a look at Dunbar's number: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number Why wouldn't we expand past the limitations of our brains, if that is beneficial to both ourselves and others, especially when extending that reasoning to a professional setting? "I should send a Christmas greeting to that cool boss i had years ago." probably doesn't occur to people that often, but is still a nice thing to do! Personally, without that text file of mine (or reminders from Facebook or whatever for others), i wouldn't remember most birthdays (of friends or acquaintances) or other celebration days, which would be bad for everyone - to me, because of feeling bad after forgetting about those days, and for others because of not receiving greetings or gifts.
lopis 5y ago
You're wrong. Just because your brain is able to keep track of your friends and actively remember to interact with them, doesn't mean everyone is like you. People who are not neurotypical can have very close friends and family and not realize that 3 months have passed since they last called home or checked in with a friend. It's so easy to forget that other people's brains don't work exactly like ours; remembering that is an extremely important habit to exercise.
ejb999 5y ago
>>the illusion of a social life, Yep, that summed it up for me in 6 words. That would also apply to most social media as well.
MaxBarraclough 5y ago
> If there were friends, he'd not need to be reminded of contacting them. That sounds rather strong. It's not unusual to keep a Christmas card list, which is pretty much the same idea. Personally I don't see a problem unless it's automatically sending messages giving the impression they're not automated. The blog post makes it clear that all the messages he sends are written by him, the system only prompts him to write+send them. I don't see an issue in using a system to send reminders. Incidentally this topic has been discussed before in a thread 7 months back. [0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27643328 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27643328

batushka3 5y ago

For so long we were (and still are) called a human resource, whole departments and studies devoted for human resource management. Treating people like assest fits here.

MrYellowP 5y ago
Doesn't make it okay. At all. "Human resources" is dehumanizing. Treating people like assets is dehumanizing. If I told my friends that I had software reminding me of contacting them, they'd consider that we're not actually friends, because friends don't need to be reminded of friends. When there's no bond reminding me, then they're not friends. One cares about friends. When you forget about them, then you're not actually caring.
- Aeolos 5y ago
  It appears that you feel strongly about this and that is ok. I would only ask you to please be kind to people who do not share your experiences, social skills or background, e.g. introverts, people suffering from social anxiety, people who are on the spectrum or have ADHD... Hundreds of millions of people, who are fully cable of caring, loving and having close friends, yet have trouble maintaining friendships not because they are bad friends, but because their brains and emotions work differently through no choice or fault of their own. If such a tool can help someone maintain a close friendship that would otherwise have fizzled, then that tool has made the world a slightly better place. I don't expect this to change your opinion, but it might be useful to hear a different perspective.
- kortilla 5y ago
  This lame take is like claiming a birthday gift is meaningless because someone used a calendar reminder. Some people have busy lives but still have many friends (especially ones spread around geographically as you get older). It’s normal adult behavior to forget to contact them for months. > When there's no bond reminding me, then they're not friends. This sounds like some obsessive behavior. I think you may have a much higher bar for friendship than most people do. I have 20-30 people I would consider strong enough friends to have them stay in my house for a weekend on short notice (to give you an idea of trust level here). I contact many of them no more than once every couple of months only when a shared interest reminds me of them. > One cares about friends. When you forget about them, then you're not actually caring. That’s not how that works. At least it doesn’t match the definition of “caring”. It sounds more like “obsessing”.

WastingMyTime89 5y ago

He didn’t talk about friends you are. Still you can safely assume most of the people in the three weeks category are close contacts. Unless you are in college and have little to no obligations, it gets hard to stay in touch with all your friends and keep track of what is happening to them. It’s not treating people like assets. He is putting efforts on his side towards keeping connections and to do that he needs tools to help. What does it change that he uses reminder to think about reaching out? In the end he is still the one doing work towards fostering relationships.

lelandfe 5y ago
The author explicitly says the goal of this work is for opportunities
- gostsamo 5y ago
  From the article: > Most importantly, I always send the kind of messages I’d like to receive. They’re short, genuine, and (ideally) helpful. I never try to sell anything and there’s no agenda other than to keep in touch. You might've read that: > So unless you have a solid system, chances are high that you won’t reach out to people regularly and miss out on a ton of fun and opportunities. but intentionally miss the fun part and treat "opportunities" only in thebusiness context and do not allow for alternative interpretations like intellectual or personal development.
- WastingMyTime89 5y ago
  The author says it’s the easiest and most effective way to make your life more serendipitous and that if you don’t you will miss on fun and opportunities which is very true. I never go have coffee or enjoy unforeseen activities with people I don’t speak to. Having a large network of lively relationship is indeed a sure way to have more things happening in your life. Also people enjoy other people reaching out to them. Once again there is nothing unusable in what OP is doing. Having tools to help you keep in touch with people is a necessity in any position where you need to maintain good relationships with a large number of people. It takes effort and is a good thing.
- 5y ago

iovrthoughtthis 5y ago

"if you cared, you'd remember" glad you have this experience, i dont think all of us do. i care deeply but seem to forget people exist and that makes me sad and dislike myself. i wish i could just remember. id still have so many friends if i did.

dgb23 5y ago
Similarly I often think of my friends plus wider circle, but I‘m terribly unorganized except I make a conscious effort. That means writing things down, set reminders and so on. Love and organization of social life are orthogonal.
- pell 5y ago
  >but I‘m terribly unorganized I really should call XY is such a common thought that fades away a second later. Even if it's someone I am really fond of. If they're not in my immediate circle, it's going to be additional work to keep that relationship alive. Putting it on my calendar or as a reminder actually makes me reach out to that person. Win-win. If anything, this shows me _caring_ about someone. Many of these conversations with the people I have in mind often start where we left off too - no matter how many weeks or months in between - which makes me think this all is not about a lack of connection.
  - p_l 5y ago
    This reminds me of anecdotes from... Time Management for System Administrators, by Tom Limoncelli. He talks exactly about "Won't people think I don't care if I have to write it down in a diary?" and mentions how, at least in his experience when reaching for diary for everything, people actually reacted positively - the extra effort of ensuring a note was made, calendar appointment created, schedule arranged made them feel that he was willing to spend some effort on them, instead of just doing the minimum.
  - Talanes 5y ago
    > I really should call XY is such a common thought that fades away a second later. This is exactly right. I am constantly thinking of people that I should get in touch with, but never at a time that would actually be appropriate to do so. It'll be the random work-day thought that disappears by the time I'm done, or it will be sometime unreasonably late.

rossmohax 5y ago

It is not much different than having birthday of your family members in the calendar. It is just a tool to remind you to make contact, what contact will be like is entirely up to you.

lvturner 5y ago

I'm not sure I agree with your take here, it's rather uncharitable. I've lost touch with friends because I failed to do this sort of thing, it's easy to not keep up with people when there is no immediate driver or common interest (perhaps I'm atypical or neurodivergent) this is multiplied when you leave a country and no longer see some people on a regular basis. A system like this would ensure my forgetful nature doesn't kick in and give me that reason I need just to check in on someone I actually care about but haven't had the opportunity to speak to in a while.

MrYellowP 5y ago
How do you manage to lose touch with friends? Did you not miss them? If you did, why didn't you contact them? If you didn't, why do you care? One can not forget about friends, one can only stop caring.
- d1sxeyes 5y ago
  Question 1 I think is packaged in your follow-up questions: - Did you not miss them? 'Missing' someone is an interesting way of thinking about it. When should you 'start' missing someone? I find that often I miss people intensely soon after we meet. This can be difficult, because it may not be possible or practical to meet or communicate with someone immediately, but then that 'missing' starts to wane. By the time it starts to become stronger again, a significant period of time might have passed. - If you did, why didn't you contact them? Missing someone is fairly subjective as mentioned above, but for me, contact alone is not enough to stop me missing someone. Meeting in person is. If I contact someone, it does not stop me missing them we are unable to meet in person, and in fact in some cases, makes me miss them more. Many of my friends don't live in the same city (or even the same country) as me. - If you didn't, why do you care? Because friendships take work, like any other type of human relationship. Someone who currently is an 'acquaintance', who I wouldn't really be too upset about not seeing frequently could develop into a friend. > 'One can not forget about friends, one can only stop caring.' - I think here you're using a very literal definition of forgetting. I think most people don't actually forget about friends, they just use the word forget as a shorthand for 'not actively thinking about all the time'.

personjerry 5y ago

I think describing other people as "friends" or "assets" are just labels you've made up. I think it's unnecessary to be condescending by saying someone else's interpretation is "incredibly sad".

zephyr9 5y ago

Yep. The author is a legit sociopath. This should in no way be considered acceptable human behaviour.

smilespray 5y ago
While I don't attempt to solve life problems by creating a database and writing a bunch of code, I think you're going a bit overboard.
AussieWog93 5y ago
A sociopath is someone who recklessly and remorselessly harms others to get what they want. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisocial_personality_disorder#Signs_and_symptoms https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Antisocial_personality_disorde... This guy is probably at most ADHD or Aspergers, and simply forgets to contact people he doesn't physically come across on a regular basis.
psd1 5y ago
Wow. Awareness of the lived experience of others: nil points. If I'm more charitable than you have been, I'll grant that you simply haven't carried the burden that I have, and that is unfair for me to expect everyone to have moderate levels of empathy, or to actively try to understand their fellow humans. A fair proportion of the people who pushed OP to the top of HN are probably just looking to live a life in accordance with healthy social values. Try not to be a cunt, would you?

erpellan 5y ago

For some people memory is event-driven not interrupt-driven. They can remember all the steps in a complex task, or when with friends, all their shared history but forget to take out the trash, or birthdays, or to call their friends.

MattGaiser 5y ago
This reminds me. I am about to go to bed and have not brushed my teeth.

MattGaiser 5y ago

> If there were friends, he'd not need to be reminded of contacting them. No, things just slip your mind, especially if there are a lot of other things going on in life. People forget to take medications that when not taken lead to psychotic breaks. It isn't because they don't care about being sane. People forget their kids in cars. They didn't casually want them dead of overheating. I have friends that when time allows, we speak to each other for hours every day. When time allows. Plenty of times one or the other has forgotten that the other existed for a few weeks. Things get forgotten.

gjulianm 5y ago
I don't think the comparison is apt. I think this is something that's being glossed over completely: friendships are two-way, and also flexible. It's not a medication that needs to be taken on a schedule, and it's not a kid that completely depends on you to do things. I don't think a relationship that's only alive because of scheduled contacts can be called a friendship.

pell 5y ago

I didn’t read this as asset management at all, nor as someone managing their actual friends in a list. It seems more like these are various people who they’ve crossed paths with at some point but who aren’t overly close anymore. It’s a system set in place to actively keep in touch with people. I understand that there is a component to this that feels very artificial and maybe therefore quite cold. But consider the other side too: someone is not the best at keeping a contact alive but still values the relationship very much so they put in the effort to create an external structure to help them out. Isn’t that a pretty warm thought after all?

rendall 5y ago

With respect, I feel like this reaction is a bit luddite. OP is using technology to help maintain and build relationships. It's not technology that's dictating anything, it's technology as it should be used: to make our lives better. I'd be absolutely fine with someone I appreciated reaching out to me and asking how things are going, even knowing they are using a prompt, as long as the contact was sincere. I'm wondering what the difference here is compared to these: a close family member / friend who is really good at keeping in touch with people, and prompts you as well; a birthday calendar; a rolodex [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolodex]; https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rolodex]; Facebook / Instagram as a primary way of keeping in touch with people For me, the difference is only in the specific technology being used, but the intent and effect is indistinguishable.

theblazehen 5y ago

That's not always so easy. For many people, such as people with ADHD, the concept of "out of sight, out of mind" affects their life to a significant level, to the point where they really enjoy contact with their friends, however reaching out to them never comes to mine. Some people legitimately can't remember to contact friends without any external prompting.

playpause 5y ago

If I write my friend's birthdays on a calendar, prompting me to contact them on their birthdays, do you think that's treating them as assets not friends? If not, what is the relevant difference?

wegi 5y ago

Hard disagree here. My days are long and full. And as a somewhat introverted person it takes additional energy to remember to keep in touch with people. Even those that I like very, very much. So it helps to have a reminder and something that actively pushes one to do so. Not every person in the world is wired the way you are. Jakobs approach is basically a more automated calendar. Plus, he is actively making an effort to keep in touch with people he deems important enough to be in his life. Its not as if he is sending automated messages to them.

vidarh 5y ago
Similar here. There are a number of people that regularly pop into my head and I'll wonder how they're doing or miss talking to them that I still rarely contact because it takes a lot of energy and I need to be in the right mindset for it even though I enjoy the contact when it happens. If I think about them at a time I don't feel up to being social (often), I end up pushing it aside.

tobyhinloopen 5y ago

What’s the alternative here? Stop contacting his friends unless he misses them? Also, why are you such a judgmental dick about it?

prmoustache 5y ago

Well I am not find of his method, especially about doing a classification of people you would call friends. This is something I would hate to do and would hate feeling others put me in a drawer. On the other hand while local friends can be easy to reach, invite or bump into randomly maintaining long distance friendship is a lot harder to do and require actively looking for that relation to not die. It is ok not to talk to friends every month when they are living far away nor does it diminish your feeling towards them and the pleasure you would have to meet them even if it takes 10y to do so. However if you are not actively maintaining a relation, and that requires some additionnal efforts as it is not natural to reach for people you aren't bumping into every other week/month, you might simply lose trail. It is relatively easy to reach to someone who has social media accounts under his own name and never changed phone number. It requires a lot more of detective work to reach out to people who aren't active on social medias. I have lived in several countries and I had to resort to use linkedin to get back in touch with some of my friends and it can took months for them to reply as most people don't even log on linkedin on a regular basis unless they are actually looking for a job. Some of them I lost complete trail as I couldn't find any social media account either. So automatising your own reminders and force yourself to talk to people you might not reach out on a regular basis, because your local social circle already keeps you busy a lot, is not necessarily a bad thing, even if it feels forced.

xelxebar 5y ago

> If there [sic] were friends... He'd miss contacting them. Interesting! It looks like you are indirectly articulating something about your personal value system and how you express and/or receive caring. Are you familiar with the Five Love Languages [0] idea? The bosic concept (and book) are tailored for couples and couples counseling, but it generalizes in obvious ways to platonic relationships. Essentially, it posits that everyone expresses caring and seeks expressions of caring in specific ways, so called "languages". It's entirely possible---probable in fact!---that the ways in which you personally express caring don't match up with the kinds of expressions that make your friend (or lover) feel most cared for. YMMV, but I've personally found this idea to difuse a lot of "judgemental" feelings towards others, especially in close relationships. [0]:https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Five_Love_Languages https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Five_Love_Languages

otikik 5y ago

I see how it might look like that, but you are missing a critical point. Everyone is different. What comes naturally to some doesn't come naturally to others. For a lot of people (me included) keeping in touch with others doesn't come "naturally". We miss contact, and yet we sheldom establish it. There are many reasons for this: poor time management skills, low self-esteem, simple lack of practice, etc. In any case, it takes effort to break out of it. Try to think about something that others do, and that you would like to do, but is difficult for you. Exercise, learn a new language, go to bed earlier, eat more healthily... whatever. This might give you a perspective of what it is like to have this "friction". I see what this person is doing as a way to remove the friction and create a new habit. I have no doubt that when "they gets the thing rolling" with someone it will gradually easy to keep engaged without the machine "dictating" anything.

l33tbro 5y ago
Then why do they frame connection in terms of a habit that yields "unlimited upside" and prevents you from missing out on opportunities? You are absolutely right that people are different, but this person comes across a little transactional and an exemplar of the Zuckerborg meme.
- dskloet 5y ago
  Why is it wrong to see a good friendship as very valuable?
  - l33tbro 5y ago
    Because valuing close friends through the lens of what personal gain they may yield is more than a little sociopathic?
    - dskloet 5y ago
      Why? Happiness and valuable shared experiences are also gains.

yreg 5y ago

I have lost several friends, even good friends by failing to contact each other. If you have many friends who move around the world a lot it's very easy to happen. I miss them very much. I don't miss them as assets as you say. I believe that if I suddenly needed their help and asked for it, they would help me - and it goes the other way as well ofc. I'm not concerned by that. But how do you start talking to someone after years and years of radio silence? Even more importantly, how do you make sure you won't slip out of touch again, other than using a system?

jollybean 5y ago

This comment is far more cynical than his life. My grandmother knew hundreds of people. Her little black book was massive. She had a system as well for reaching out. Your emotions are good for regulating your relationships with 5-10 people, that's about it.

hnlmorg 5y ago

I don't like this method much either but in fairness to the author, as you get older and our social circle inevitably widens with friends from old sports clubs, old neighbors, friends from school, colleague, university, old jobs, friends who are kids friends parents from school, et al, and thus it gets harder and harder to keep track of everyone given much effort it often takes to keep our head above water in our own busy lives. How many people say "we only catch up once every couple of years?" At least this method allows the author to keep those connections open for people he wants to stay in contact with. Even if it might seem a little impersonal from a superficial standpoint.

erwincoumans 5y ago

No he doesn't, you reach the wrong conclusion. It is more similar to a birthday calendar reminder.

Ialdaboth 5y ago

I guess you must be pretty young and havent experimented yet how easy it is to get swallowed by life.

CalRobert 5y ago

There are a lot of people I care about, but sometimes you just _forget_. Or you remember, but it's too late to call them, or they're in a bad time zone, or they mostly use FB and you hate FB. After two kids, rebuilding a derelict house, etc. I found I had to be more intentional about keeping any friendships alive, and this basically seems like a more involved version of keeping friends' birthdays in a calendar to drop them a line.

anoncow 5y ago

Some people can’t express and maintain relationships like other people but still like their friends. Having a system which can make my friends feel that I value them (which I do, but find difficult expressing) helps some people maintain a semblance of a social life.

ivanhoe 5y ago

> So instead he needs a tool to remind him of that "friend" he needs to contact, because pretending to care is beneficial. One might some day need them. Regardless whether Dunbar's number is real or not, one cannot have "hundreds" of actual friends. So we're not really talking about friendships here, but about maintaining a network of contacts - or acquaintances at best - and that type of relationship is usually mutually based on the premise that "One might some day need them", there's nothing wrong about approaching it that way. And even though you're not super close, keeping in touch regularly is very important aspect of keeping your social ring alive. I'm too lazy and disorganized to approach it the way the author describes, but I totally see how it can be a beneficial socializing strategy in long terms.

rcdwealth 5y ago

AussieWog93 5y ago

>So instead he needs a tool to remind him of that "friend" he needs to contact, because pretending to care is beneficial. One might some day need them. You've basically described every single family relationship ever. You don't like catching up with them, and they don't like catching up with you, but you do it anyway because one day you might need a kidney or a ticket out of Warsaw.

scotty79 5y ago

> He'd miss contacting them. I keep fond memories of nearly all people I know. I'd help them on the spot and have a pleasent conversarion if they contacted me. Yet I never miss contacting people I know.

mlatu 5y ago

Look, it's great you can handle your friends with ease. It's really great your life didn't mess you up to a point where contacting people you would normally call friends induces anxiety. Really, congratulations to your great and happy life. Others have to rely on shitty tricks like these. What are YOUR weaknesses then? What can YOU not handle without the help of technology? Please share so somebody can make fun of you too :D OP: thanks for posting.

afandian 5y ago

This comment comes across as arrogant. It's a privilege to have the spare time and energy to act on all of your intentions. You could apply the same argument to keeping to-do lists, storing people's phone numbers in your phone book, using facebook or having a birthday calendar etc. Try having a child and see how close your ability to execute is with your principles!

reyqn 5y ago
Who is arrogant there? It's not an issue not to keep in touch every 3 weeks with someone. When you have a child, you just meet new people, parents of your child's friends for example. Relationships don't disappear, they pause, when you get back to them, it's like riding a bike, and if you don't get back to them, it's ok. It's what you do with your life which dictates who you meet, and who you have relationships with. Just live your life, you don't have to try and hack everything... If you really need a system like this, why not, but even I who suck at keeping in touch feel this is overkill and unnatural.
- terafo 5y ago
  Not everyone is good at socializing. Just live your life is a terrible advice for someone who is struggling with people.
  - reyqn 5y ago
    Yeah, that's what I'm saying. This system is terrible advice for someone who isn't really struggling with people, to such a point that it's detrimental to his wellbeing.

mrtb 5y ago

I think the alternative to having a social life "dictated by a machine" (a machine which, in this case, encodes the intentions of its programmer) is to have a social life dictated by chance and by other's intentions - coincidences on public transport, social media posts ranked by a black box, the noisy patterns of our recollection, etc... what is so 'authentic' about sacrificing one's attention to these forces, which may only align accidentally with our priorities? I've kept a spreadsheet for about 5 years of people I know from my hometown, from uni, past jobs, in other countries, family of friends, etc... ranked roughly by how frequently to contact them, and it has been so helpful and fun for me (and them!) to use it. This might not be helpful for everyone, depending on what you care about and the size of your network, but it seems more "sad" to me that people let chance and social media control their patterns of interaction.

globular-toast 5y ago

> He'd miss contacting them. No, you would miss contacting them. But he is not you. Your comment can be read in two ways. Perhaps you think everyone should be like you and those who are different are "sad". I hope I don't need to explain why this is wrong. Or perhaps you think someone who isn't like you doesn't deserve to have any human contact and should be alone. What a horrible thing to think.

antihero 5y ago

That seems like a very neurotypical view point. Of course people miss people, however, some people (especially people with for instance ADHD) often forget stuff and get distracted, so having an extra layer of organisation can be extremely helpful.

ivanche 5y ago

How did you conclude he’s talking about friends? In the whole article word "friend" doesn’t appear even once. Also, a person can hardly have hundreds of friends. Three, sure. Seven, very probably. Twelve, maybe. But hundreds? Impossible.

hwers 5y ago

He also pretty much screws up the whole system by announcing it like this. There's no way I'd feel anything but manipulation coming my way if I was his friend and a message from this guy popped up in my notifications.

TheAceOfHearts 5y ago

People with ADHD sometimes forget people even exist when they're out of sight. Just because your built-in OS lacks a scheduler and notifications to remind you to keep a connection with friends doesn't mean you don't care about them. Sometimes the person might even receive the notification but fails to act on it because of poor social conditioning.

verisimi 5y ago

He's delegating his humanity and friendships into a spreadsheet! Next stop, do the interactions themselves in the cloud!! Makes sense for networking though. Which I think is what he's actually getting at.

KronisLV 5y ago

> If there were friends, he'd not need to be reminded of contacting them. He'd miss contacting them. As someone who needs a separate text file for remembering important dates (from where i stand, calendars are just weird, the months names arbitrary, the amounts of days in each also an example of some odd legacy system), i disagree. If my brain refuses to work well for dates for a few dozen people, why would someone else remember to contact more people, especially given how busy the lives of many are? Is it a bit nonconventional to develop an automation system for that? Maybe, but then again, people don't even bat an eye when putting down events in their Google Calendar or whatever. "If those events mattered, you wouldn't need to be reminded of them." doesn't sound like a reasonable argument to my brain, even though it might to someone else's. > It's incredibly sad that his social life, or rather: the illusion of a social life, is being dictated by a machine. It's not sad (to me and probably others), please don't downplay someone putting in the effort to address what would otherwise be a shortcoming. Even though a bit odd, if it works for them, props to that person! For further reading, have a look at Dunbar's number: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunbar%27s_number Why wouldn't we expand past the limitations of our brains, if that is beneficial to both ourselves and others, especially when extending that reasoning to a professional setting? "I should send a Christmas greeting to that cool boss i had years ago." probably doesn't occur to people that often, but is still a nice thing to do! Personally, without that text file of mine (or reminders from Facebook or whatever for others), i wouldn't remember most birthdays (of friends or acquaintances) or other celebration days, which would be bad for everyone - to me, because of feeling bad after forgetting about those days, and for others because of not receiving greetings or gifts.

lopis 5y ago

You're wrong. Just because your brain is able to keep track of your friends and actively remember to interact with them, doesn't mean everyone is like you. People who are not neurotypical can have very close friends and family and not realize that 3 months have passed since they last called home or checked in with a friend. It's so easy to forget that other people's brains don't work exactly like ours; remembering that is an extremely important habit to exercise.

ejb999 5y ago

>>the illusion of a social life, Yep, that summed it up for me in 6 words. That would also apply to most social media as well.

MaxBarraclough 5y ago

> If there were friends, he'd not need to be reminded of contacting them. That sounds rather strong. It's not unusual to keep a Christmas card list, which is pretty much the same idea. Personally I don't see a problem unless it's automatically sending messages giving the impression they're not automated. The blog post makes it clear that all the messages he sends are written by him, the system only prompts him to write+send them. I don't see an issue in using a system to send reminders. Incidentally this topic has been discussed before in a thread 7 months back. [0] [0] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27643328 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=27643328